The invention concerns a labeling station having at least one pickup element mounted for rotation or swinging movement, especially in the case of an eccentric arrangement, on a rotating carrier, for labels to be applied one over the other to objects, and having a gripper cylinder which bears on a rotating carrier eccentrically disposed gripping and pressing elements for the upper and lower labels, which elements are tangent to the path of rotation of the pickup elements approximately in synchronism, the said labels being transfered by the gripping and pressing elements to objects moved along a transport path, whose areas to be labeled are at different distances from the gripper cylinder axis.
In one known labeling station of this kind, the gripping and pressing elements revolve on the same circular path. This complies with the requirement that, in the removal of the upper and lower labels from the pickup elements constructed as glue palettes, for example, there must be synchronism between the upper and lower gripping elements. The transfer of the labels to the objects, e.g., to bottles, offers no difficulty as regards the belly label, since the circular path of the gripping and pressing elements and the path of movement of the bottle belly can be brought into the desired spatial relationship and the path speeds of the bottle belly can be adapted to that of the associated pressing elements to one another. The labeling of the neck of the bottle, however, presents difficulties insofar as it is necessary to bridge the distance between the path of circulation of the gripping and pressing elements and the area of the bottleneck that is to be labeled.
This difficulty is overcome in the known labeling station by advancing the pressing element radially pulsewise, in transferring the label to the bottleneck. The disadvantage of this is not only that an advancing means must be provided for each pressing element, but also the path speed of the bottleneck differs greatly from the path speed of the advanced pressing element. This difference is due to the fact that the area of the bottleneck to which the label is to be applied moves on a path that is convexly curved in relation to the gripper cylinder, the radius of curvature of said path being smaller than that of the belly of the bottle. If the angular velocities are equal, the path speed of the bottleneck is accordingly lower than that of the belly of the bottle for which synchronism with the corresponding pressing element exists. Furthermore, the difference in the path speed is due to the fact that the pressing element is brought by the advancement onto a path having a greater radius of curvature. A greater radius of curvature, however, means a higher path speed at the same angular velocity. The deviation from the desired synchronism due to this last reason is especially great, because the radius of curvature of the advanced pressing element is doubled for the rotatory speed (German Patent No. 2,035,477).